Juvenile Residential Facility Census (JRFC) Series

The Juvenile Residential
Facility Census (JRFC) collects basic information on facility
characteristics, including size, structure, security arrangements, and
ownership. It also provides information on the use of bed space in the
facility to indicate whether the facility is experiencing
crowding. The JRFC includes questions about the type of facility, such
as detention center, training school, ranch, or group home. This
information is complemented by a series of questions about other
residential services provided by the facility, such as independent
living, foster care, or other arrangements. The JRFC uses four modules
to collect information on the health care, education, substance abuse
treatment, and mental health treatment provided to youth in these
facilities. These four modules are not always collected each
year. While not evaluating the effectiveness or quality of these
services, the JRFC gathers important information about the youth the
services are directed toward and how the services are provided. The
census indicates the use of screenings or tests conducted to determine
counseling, education, health, or substance abuse needs, and also
examines prominent issues about conditions of confinement, including
the restraint of youth and improper absences from the
facility. Congress requires the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to report annually on the number of
deaths of juveniles in custody; JRFC collects information on such
deaths for the one-year period just prior to the census reference
date. The census reference date is the fourth Wednesday in
October. The inclusion criteria for facilities are: (1) the facility
must house persons under the age of 21, (2) who were charged with or
adjudicated for an offense, and (3) were present in the facility on
the reference date because of that offense. JRFC does not capture data
on adult prisons or jails, nor does it include facilities that are
used exclusively for mental health or substance abuse treatment or for
dependent children.

Years Produced: Biennially since 2000, in
even-numbered years.

National Juvenile Corrections Data
Summary

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention sponsored three series of national juvenile corrections
data collections:

The CJRP
was administered for the first time in 1997. The CJRP replaced the
Census of Public and Private Juvenile Detention, Correctional, and
Shelter Facilities (formerly called the Juvenile Detention and
Correctional Facility Census series and also known as the Children in
Custody (CIC) census), which had been conducted since the early
1970s. The CJRP differs fundamentally from CIC in that the CIC
collected aggregate data on juveniles held in each facility (e.g.,
number of juveniles in the facility) and the CJRP collects an
individual record on each juvenile held in the residential facility to
provide a detailed picture of juveniles in custody. The companion data
collection to CJRP, the JRFC, is designed to collect information about
the facilities in which juvenile offenders are held.

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